


A Puzzling Journey

by Kudalyn



Category: Journey (Video Game 2012), Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Crossover, M/M, Puzzleshipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-02-02 21:34:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12734748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kudalyn/pseuds/Kudalyn
Summary: He, who was once alone on his path, finds another.---------------YGO/Journey (by ThatGameCompany) crossover.Single page drabble for now, as always with my works more chapters possibly in the future.





	A Puzzling Journey

A spark flew. Bright against even brighter colors.

He opened his eyes.

Gold was the first thing he saw. Gold earth, gold skies, gold everything. He blinked, and the hot breeze blew the sand across his lap.

He sat for a moment, gathering his bearings. The wind blew again, threatening to bury his legs in the golden grains, so he stood up.

His cloak ruffled behind him, catching his attention as its weight finally occurred to him. It was long, and scarlet, trimmed in gold. Seems the very color of the sands is sewn into his cloak.

Looking up, before him lay a large dune. Squinting his eyes, he could just make out a shape perched atop it. Curious, he walked forward, his thin legs all but dancing across the sands. Testing himself, he jumped, and to his immense delight he all but flew, cloak flapping like wings as he glided across the hot wind.

Reveling in his mobility, it made it easy to hop up the dune, and soon he was at the top.

The shape he spotted before was a tall carved stone, a hexagonal hole through the top, and a tattered cloth looped through it. He thought he could almost make out what appeared to be small markings carved into it as well… but before he could look closer, a glow caught the corner of his eye.

Something brighter than the golden sands around him? He looked up immediately.

And was in awe.

Acres beyond him, shrouded in sands and distance, was a mountain. It jutted up through the sky, its peak glistening like the sun.

He felt a tug, deep in his soul.

The mountain peak called to him.

 

* * *

 

The sand, ever present, shifted as he walked.

Normally, he found he preferred to keep to the air as much as he possibly could. But that wasn’t always easy.

His scarf was long, quite long. He was proud of it for some reason, of how it flapped elegantly behind him and glowed with light.  

Light… and sound. Sound that he had discovered he could make, when he came upon a small gathering of cloth scraps flying about innocently in the hot wind.

His startled chirp, the voice carrying out in the stillness and all but illuminating the air around him, caught the attention of the scraps, that immediately flocked to him, giving him a surge of power that resonated in his chest.

He’d since then found many, many things mostly buried in the sands as he kept travelling towards the mountain. Buildings, obviously once magnificent in height and artistry, were nothing but rubble now.

And often tucked away in these ruins were small murals, glimpses of a long past civilization that looked eerily similar to how he did.

He started avoiding the stones - the tombstones - soon after he learned the truth.

But still he pressed ever forward. Determinedly so when he first met the Tall One, the Pure One - a glimpse into a world of nothing but white, a world where he watched the story of a past, his kind’s past.

Something was waiting for him. He wasn’t sure what, or why, but he knew… this was something that called to his very soul. Something he had to do, to see, to live.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy himself along the way, despite the somberness  - and ominousness - of some of the ruins he traveled through. He could still enjoy their beauty and majesty as he zipped through them, kept company by similar creatures to the scarlet scraps - equally as bright but much larger. They called out to him in delighted voices, calls that he replied in joy, as they picked him up on their backs and flew him along much in a way he wished he could do on his own.

But as much power as they tried to share, his energy would deplete along with the glowing runes on his scarf, and he was landbound until he could be charged again.

Standing upon yet another one of those odd, angular grey stones that trapped his companion’s kind, he cried out. His ringing, chiming voice illuminated another large ribbon of cloth that disappeared in light, and with a heavy grating something in the stone opened and a new friend popped out.

Looking around, he guessed he had freed them all in this area - though why they were trapped in various areas and mechanisms was still beyond him.

A sound caught his attention, and he saw the larger cloth creatures circling one another in joy, along with a large collection of smaller scraps floating in the sun. He eagerly walked over to them all, and was swarmed in a flurry of scarlet and sound, and was soon lifted up. Up, up above the immense wall before him.

Laid out in front of him was a slope, littered with bits and pieces of ruins, structures and arches peppered across the landscape. The slope’s angle caught the sun perfectly, making the already bright sand glitter gloriously.

He felt his chest swell, the sight as beautiful as it was saddening, before his perch on a cloth creature was suddenly dropped out from under him.

With a startled chirp, he landed in the sand, the grains loose and free under his feet. He began sliding, racing forwards, unable to stop no matter how much he tried. So he angled himself, stance steady, and slid in an almost free-fall down the slope.

He couldn’t help but let out a whoop, voice bright and echoed by the multitude of cloth creatures that were following his descent. They were joyous, diving in and out of the loose sand around him, looping around and swooping through arches. He tried to mimic them, but wasn’t able to make much more than a few arches before the slope steepened drastically.

He slid on, just barely able to round a sharp corner as the loose grains carried him forward.  A bright, sharp glimmer made him squint, but he soon adjusted, and his eyes widened at the sight before him.

He was sliding along and immense corridor, stone overhead and out beyond the pillars, was a city. Larger than anything he had seen before, buildings and architecture spreading out so far into the distance they were nothing but faded shapes, and it still went further than that, almost melding with the mountain against the sky.

The pillars he sped by were dark lines cutting up the landscape, particularly in comparison to the brightness the city gave off bathed in the sunlight. He could just barely make out the sight of some other cloth creatures flying freely above the city in clouds, all calling out in harmony. He had thought he’d seen beauty in the ruins before, but this made his chest clench in a much stronger way than ever before.

He hardly had a moment to drink in the sight before the sands whipped him out of the corridor and down yet another slope into the city. This slope was sharp, barely able to feel the ground beneath his feet. Alongside him some of the cloth creatures flew, but they weren’t joyous anymore. Their cries were sharp, worried, keeping close to him but unable to whisk him away because of his speed. He didn’t dare leap off the ground and attempt to glide, his speed now far too great.

The city started darkening around him the further he slid, the sun being eclipsed by stone. Arches and supporting beams whipped overhead, some far too close for comfort, as the warmth of the sun faded rapidly and the once inviting sand at his feet turning cold.

He squinted ahead of him, trying to understand what was happening, when suddenly the ground under his feet disappeared altogether.

He cried out in shock, spreading his cloak in an attempt to fly, but his energy soon depleted and he dropped. He heard the cloth creatures cries overhead, but none of them followed him into the depths as he fell further and further.

He had no idea how far he fell, cloak and scarf whipping about him, when with a sudden and painful thump, he landed on solid ground.

The impact shuddered through his body, displacing sand around him, and he gave a pained chirp as he struggled through the new sensation.

After a while it faded, and he was able to stand from where he had crumpled. It was very dark where he was, golds replaced with blues. There were a few spots of light that filtered through the gloom, white against the depths, and he kept to those as much as he could as he explored.

Hopping from spotlight to spotlight, the darkness unsettled him after spending so long in unending sunlight. The silence seemed endless, heavier and more ominous than the warm stillness of the sands above. Even still, he carried onwards, knowing there was nowhere else to go but forwards.

He started to get used to the darkness, his eyes adjusting, and he could make out shapes.

Pillars that reached upwards beyond sight, stone tunnels crumbled here and there. Along with the ever-present chunks of grey stone, angular and sharp.

Those chunks of grey stone started becoming more and more frequent, less scattered randomly and almost laid out in patterns, like they had once been stacked and fallen.

Suddenly, in the distance, he saw a light - a glow that flickered. Was it a way out? A cloth creature? He raced forward, eager for something friendly in all this cold.

The glow was anything but friendly, he found, when he came upon it. It was another grey stone, but a pattern was illuminated on one side, green light flickering weakly. He vaguely remembered seeing something like it before, at that large ruined tower.

It had unsettled him greatly, ancient mechanisms in it still grinding away loudly. It had had similar markings on the inner mechanisms, moving like clockwork and flickering through the metal grates.

They looked vaguely like faces. He had never liked them, and upon seeing one here, he found he still didn’t.

Ripping his eyes away from the flickering stone, he kept going, praying to the Tall Ones that this wasn’t an ill omen.

The immense pillars spread out more evenly, the spotlights growing few and far between, replaced by an almost unnerving green glow that faintly illuminated some areas.

The silence was broken suddenly, startling him badly as the cry echoed through the pillars. But when his shock wore off, he recognized it, and couldn’t help but let out a delighted chirp in reply.

He raced towards the sound, abandoning the caution he had before in desperation for something friendly. In the distance, he could see a lone cloth creature, circling a spotlight and crying out in loneliness. He replied to it, seeing it stop and flit about at his voice.

It gave another cry, voice cheerful, and began flying towards him.

Suddenly, out of the sand, something burst forth with a  _ sound _ , wailing and resonating and utterly terrifying. It ripped through the cloth creature, causing it to shred into scatters of light, its illuminated face sliding up to reveal a large glowing eye.

It was immensely large, and made up of all those sharp grey stones he had been seeing in his journey, stone wings and joints floating together into one large serpentine shape.

The monster cried out once more, the sound shuddering through his chest, and it turned its glowing eye upon him.

He screamed, and turned tail. Gathering all the rest of his energy, he frantically flew off, his chest pulsing with fear as he heard the monster lurch forward with a mechanical whine.

Instinctively he dove to the side, and the monster just barely lunged past him, sand scattering and wind from the impact blowing him end over end.

Scrambling to his feet, he kept running, blind with terror as he heard the monster reorganize itself, stone grinding against stone as it searched for him. He kept going, not caring where he went as long as it was AWAY from that thing.

Into the darkness he fled, from the monsters and the cloth creatures and everything else behind him in his desperation.

The light faded, the sounds faded, and soon he was left in utter blackness like he’d never experienced before. He couldn’t even see himself anymore, let alone where his feet were, the only sound coming from the sand he could still feel under his feet.

Finally exhausting himself, he collapsed into the blackness. At least the sand still felt familiar as it pressed up against his face, praying for the throbbing burn in his chest to fade.

Eventually it did, and he pushed himself to his knees. He couldn’t even tell the difference between closing and opening his eyes, but kept them open out of fear.

He wasn’t supposed to be here.

He felt it deep in his chest, in his soul. He really, really wasn’t supposed to be here. There were no signs, no markings or ruins that he could see, no signs of any life past or present.

A different fear pressed upon him. Not one of pure terror, but of just wrongness. Of the unknown, of the uncertain. But he had no path, nothing to tell him the right way to go. Even if he turned around right that instant, there would be no way he could be sure he was heading back the way he came. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted to do that, shuddering at the memory of the stone monster.

He heaved a sigh, peering unseeing into the darkness. If he couldn’t be sure of the right way to go… may as well put one foot in front of the other, just as he always did. He had always followed his feet, and found no reason why he shouldn’t continue doing so. So he stood up, shook his cloak in habit to clear it of grains of sand, and started walking.

 

* * *

 

 

The darkness was never ending. That much, he was sure of now. The fear had abaited some steps past, his mind first trying to terrorize him with imagined monsters lurking unseen. But when nothing had happened for many steps, he pushed past it. Now, he was more irritated at the darkness than anything else. What gives? Why was it so endless, so pressing? It had no right to be this way. How dare it.

This was how he passed the time, for it was better to be angry at the darkness than just be afraid of it, he found. Being afraid was far too tiring.

Just when he thought for sure he could have already been at the mountain, for how long it felt like he’d been walking… a light appeared.

It was faint, very faint, but it was light nonetheless. And as a bonus, it wasn’t the terrifying green of the stone monsters. Heartened, he ran forward. It took him quite some time to reach the light, having to pause to regain his energy halfway. When he did so, he squinted through the darkness to take a closer look at it.

It was very hard to tell, but there seemed to be a figure. Or possibly, a stone that looked like a figure. The possibility of it being a figure, perhaps even, someone like him? Both excited and frightened him. But the call of the light was far too sweet after so long in the darkness, so his feet led him forward.

The closer he got, the more he was able to see, and his steps slowed till he was standing in front of them, just in the cusp of the brilliant spotlight that illuminated them.

They were sitting in the center of the spotlight, eyes closed and head bowed with their cloak in a graceful circle around them. Their scarf looked to be quite long, but it was mostly buried in the sands like the edges of their cloak.

He found himself unable to do much more than stare. Unlike his own deep scarlet cloak, theirs was a pure white, much like the others he had seen in his visions.

Could this possibly be… a Tall One?

No, impossible, he corrected himself. For one, this figure was obviously not tall. At most, it’d be the same height he was. Plus… he couldn’t quite put his scarf on it, but it seemed, wrong. Their markings were unlike the ones he saw on the Tall Ones. And why would one be sitting down here in the darkness in absolute stillness?

He pondered some more, turning his head this way and that inspecting the figure and unsure of what action to take, when they moved.

Frozen stock still in shock, he watched as their eyes blinked once, twice. Before lifting up and spotting him, raising their head and staring deeply at him.

When their eyes met his, he felt this… connection. Deeply rooted in his soul, his chest gave a sudden wrench, like it had found something it had been missing before that it hadn’t realized was gone. But then the sensation passed as soon as it hit him, and he forgot about it in favor of staring back at the other figure.

The figure tilted their head gently.

_ Hello. _ They chirped

He startled, cloak ruffling. He had… heard that. But it wasn’t the same as what he was used to, the sounds from the cloth creatures more emotions and feeling than anything he could put to - words. That’s what they are.

_ H-hello. _ He tried, finding that the words came to him quite easily.

The figure seemed just as surprised as he did, though they collected themselves quickly.

_ Where are we? _ They asked.

Their voice was different than his. His was a light chime, melodious. Theirs was much deeper, resonating. It was nice.

_ I do not know. _ He answered honestly, and was rewarded with what he remembered was a chuckle.

_ Ah. That makes us both lost. _ They said, looking around and sounding quite sad.

He found he didn’t like how that made their voice sound, not at all.

_ We - we can try to be not lost? _ He suggested, the sounds-words-thoughts not quite coming out right as he had planned. He ducked his head embarrassed - what an interesting, new feeling, though not too pleasant - when the figure laughed lightly.

Though their laughter sounded quite lovely.

_ I’d be honored if you’d be willing to help me be not lost… though I can’t remember the last time I was  _ not _ lost _ . They said.  _ I can’t remember the last - anything, to be honest. _

His heart clenched at that. He knew exactly how it felt to be blank without any direction, though he had been able to find his way fairly quickly. To be lost down here, no markers or path to follow… it must be terribly lonely.

_ We can find a path together _ . He said, sounding a lot braver than he felt at the moment. But the figures eyes turned to crescents in an unmistakable smile, and he felt himself doing the same.

_ Thank you, truly. _ They said, finally standing up. He had been right, they were the same height. Their scarf was also incredibly long, half of it still buried in the sand while the tip of his lay resting atop.

He looked them over once again, they watching him do so with a curious tilt to their head.

_ Shall we go, Other Me? _ He said impulsively, watching as the other jolted slightly in shock at the title. But it felt fitting, seeing as how this was the only other being he had met that was so similar to himself.

They seemed to attempt to collect themselves, set uneven but not appearing offended. If anything, they were bashful by the way they scuffed their foot in the sand.

_ We shall. _ They eventually said, and he chirped happily.

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this AU on the backburner for quite some time now, just wrote this up quickly for a bit of practice for something easy/different from my usual writing. Sorry for the lame title! :P   
> I have a few old doodles for this au on my blog under #ygojourney. Hope you enjoyed!
> 
> Thank you very much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the story! Please feel free to leave comments, even if I don't reply often on this site - I read and love every single one! Also feel free to send an ask to my tumblr!


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